Tag Archives: Bike of the Month

I try to stay as far away from politics as I can; tax is inevitable, and they’ll never do what we want anyway, so why bother? I’m happy to say that OSS is the same; no Brexit discussions here, and that’s how it should be.

Now, “politics” in itself goes further than just the governing body of your country. One could argue that us admins practice politics in our own way, but we honestly try not to; everyone here is the same, and we all follow the same basic rules. We just have the means to push some buttons when someone’s out of step, so we can safely guide our little Ark of OSS through the turbulent waters that is the current Internet.

One thing that I’m very wairy of, is nepotism. Under no circumstances must anyone one this page feel he or she is drawing the shorter straw, just because they’re not part of the IC. Yes, I have many true and some very close friends here, but I’ll take the piss out of them just as much as everybody else; we’re all the same.

Now, the other side of this is actually glancing over that what your friends have achieved in their sheds and when I was thinking about my next choice for BOTM, it was only right to give Dave his spot in the limelight. His EFE has been a regular since the first incarnation of this website, and Dave has done us all proud in rebuilding it to a standard we can only approve of.

Built to use 2-up TT2018, he started May’17 (a year before TT) and in absolute true OSS-fasion, it was in bits hours before rocking up at the ferry to get over to the Island. I was witness to it all and it would’ve felt wrong if it hadn’t been the case.

The bike made it to, over and back from the Isle of Man without any terminal damage. Going to the TT on a bike you built in your own shed or garage is brave in itself. If said bike then actually holds its own there, you know it will do anywhere; the place it utter mechanical torture, but in a good way.

We’re now almost a year on and this bike hadn’t yet made it to be chosen as BOTM. That is by no means because it wasn’t up to par before but here, we just really are spoilt for choice and it’s just one of those things.. Not taking away from the quality of any of the bikes chosen as BOTM up to now, or the ones after, but this bike was long overdue its recognition.

When we set out resurrecting Oldskoolsuzuki.info as a website and dedicated forum, we knew we had a monumental task ahead of us. It would be hard, take countless hours, maybe even cost serious money, and we didn’t really know if it would actually be succesful. Still, as you know, we went ahead anyway

Bike projects can be pretty much the same; when you start off with a bunch of bits and a general idea of what you want, you’ll never really know how it truly will end up until it’s done, and if it will actually work or not.

Solcambs managed to bag a Bay of E-bargain and set to work, using the forum to document how the Katana you see before you went from a bare frame to what it is today and likely, what it will be later. Starting with a 750 frame and aircooled 1100 motor, later swapped out for a bit more fresh oilboiler. Blasphemy in the eyes of the purists, which, we’re not.

Through the 22 pages that the topic is now long, we’ve seen the build through the stages of initial planning, fiddling with forks and carbs, right through to a tour of continental Europe, proving again that our bikes are more than capable to shine in the current day traffic.

I know we’re not always given the time of day by the general “Biker” fraternity, usually only until we outbrake, accelerate or just plain outrun them on our outdated bikes, but this Katana is yet another example of how a 35 year old bike can be made more than relvant in the Now, and looking better than anything you can buy in the showroom today (and basically, ever) to boot.

Congratulations Solcambs, your Katana is this months Bike of the Month

I’m a firm believer of the proverb; “Better late than never”; It’s never too late to change your life for the better, it’s never too late to resurrect that website that used to be so great once (because it is once again), and it’s never too late to start Dragracing..

Anna first pointed her front wheel quarter-milewards after having owned the bike she was on for the grand total of 35 years. The seed was planted and a racingcareer was born. In the quest for more speed a Slingshot was put into service and over time up to now, all the right mods have been made to get the bike as quick as possible, yet also as rideable as possible for Anna; it’s all well and good having a 500Bhp bike but if you can’t use it, there’s not really a point (apart from being the baddest dude in the pub)

We have been enjoying Anna and Kyle’s adventures in great detail as them being one of the first (maybe even The First?) Winged Hammers, the racethread has been religiously updated after nearly every racemeet and tests that were undertaken.

We’ve all read about crashing, burnouts, racing in sub-zero temperatures, tyrepunctures and all else that comes with the age-old sport that is dragracing. I for one hope the regular updates continue to be posted up, because it’s one of the threads that makes you come back, have a bit of a read, get motivated and start working away on your own projects again.

Better late than never Anna (and Kyle), your Slingshot is this months Bike of the Month.

I’m not one for drinking (much) but generally, the best ideas are conjured up during a good session on the booze. This bike came to frutition just like that.

Imagine just any cool bike. Did you? Was it a GS500E? I bet it wasn’t. When you put that night on the piss into the equation and you start toying with ideas, together with some equally pissed up friends, what’s not cool in the sober world, can be mindblowing in the other.

The title of the buildtopic of this particular bike raised some eyebrows amongst those with access to certain buttons but with the story unfolding in high gear, all was well. The OP was left to it and we all got to see how Tony actually went ahead with his mad plan and built what could arguably be the raddest GS500E on the planet.

We’re very narrowminded here and don’t like too many different bikes, the GS500E normally really isn’t one of them. Tony’s bike however, is an example how, if you’re a bit creative and have a very big partsbin, you can cheaply make something utterly undesirable into the coolest bike on the block.

Having something like BOTM on Oldskool is a big deal. It carries a certain weight, which makes OSS stand out from all the other websites and facebookpages that scatter the internet and, to me anyway, just water things down. Good bikes are good bikes, but having to visit 10+ websites and filter through the bolt-on brigade to find a few bikes worth reading about, gets old really quick. We’re different, we know it, others know it, and it will only get better.

One could argue that choosing BOTM for the next month, should be for a newly finished project, largely built on the forum, with its own thread and many, MANY pictures. However, due to the sheer amount of bikes being built over the years, sometimes a bike more than worthy of being chosen as BOTM has to wait for a bit.

This bike is such an installment. Its owner/builder Arttu has been a OSS-household name for many years. While many of us modernise our bikes with newer suspension, wheels and brakes, Arttu takes it up a notch. You see, the bike you see here is basically a rolling test bed for all sorts of EFI-trickery, which really shouldn’t have any place on one of our air- or oilcooled motors. Now, he didn’t just get it to work properly on his turbo EFE-powered EZ, he now helps many others out to convert their bikes to fuel injection as well.

I personally have been up close with 2 projects Arttu has been involved with and I can tell you the quality is beyond what you’d expect from a factory, let alone someone working from a little shed in Finland. It’s all pretty impressive and with the build reaching a next stage, it will only get better.

The story ended with his plans to build a very well poked 1100 version of his trusty 750 slabby which would race at East Fortune and also at Spa.

Well he built it and he raced it at Spa, sporting the OSS race team winged hammer emblem too! More than this, he achieved a first and second in his class. Not bad for his first time at Spa. Go winged hammers!

May and June have been busy months for the OSS Admin team. Endurance legends at Donington followed by the TT and even some highland scratching thrown in for good measure. So OSS site time has been limited. (OK excuses for late BOTM out of the way)

Three years ago I wrote this article about a long time member who had long held a dream of building an engine that he had been quietly collecting the bits for .It may have escaped the attention of some, but not me, that he actually built that engine this year.

He didn’t just build it for fun either, he built it to compete at the Donington 4 hour endurance race, against some pretty serious competition.

What is even more special about this bike is that the builder found out early on in the build that he been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Lesser men may have chucked the towel in right there and then but not this guy. He was too busy for cancer and decided he would postpone his treatment so that he could finish the bike and compete on it at Donington. The stuff of legends, I know.

In the end the minor inconvenience of a life threatening medical diagnosis must have momentarily distracted him because although this bike got finished there just wasn’t enough time to get it match fit. Our man still competed in the event along with 2 other OSS team members but it was on the back up bike (not a Suzuki)

Now that John has completed his goal of competing in the endurance legends round at Donington his treatment can begin. He hasn’t wasted any time in making some big life changes including selling all of his bikes and parts. I know that he still has the GS though and I hope he keeps it and gets it to run the way he knows it can.

John you are a Legend mate and we love you and your GS is bike of the month. You are also the only man in OSS history to have been awarded bike of the month 3 times.

This month’s bike of the month is a tale of both resurrection and evolution. Plucked from an insurance sale, this slightly fire damaged, pretty standard machine was rescued by nightrider. It was quite a rare find – especially the other side of the Atlantic. The decision is what we at OSS would call ‘a no brainer’.

We’ve been watching the story of this machine since the oldskoolsuzuki.info site itself was resurrected and as is often the case with projects progress sometimes stalls. Over the last 3 years we’ve seen a pragmatic mix of make do (when the OEM spares are hard to get) and mend.

With some advice and moral support from folk who have done the same thing as you and the balls to give it a go (or know when to sub it out) most obstacles can be over come. The proof is in the riding but this ES is easy on the eye in that striking blue squareness it wears so well.

So the GS 1100 ES has now returned to it’s rightful duty as a smile inducing muncher of miles. And I have no doubt the story and evolution will continue.

There’s many reasons to start your own build, with “because I want to” coming first and “because I can” second. (If the person taking on this project actually can, is something different, but more on that some other time)

Other reasons are aplenty but there’s two that carry much more load than any other reason I can think of. One; building the dream bike of a lost friend. Two; being asked to build that dream bike, by said lost friend.

This Katana was trusted upon Pete by Dave “Swingarm” Roberts, member of old and builder of one of the very few actually cool Bandits in history. Dave was lost to a horrible disease and the Katana for which he already had most of the parts, was left to Pete to finish.

Pete took it upon himself to finish the bike to a standard we rarely see outside of OSS. With a general idea of what Dave wanted the bike to be, he set to work.

Built over the course of less than a year, the Katana was entered in the Newark Show as its first public outing this January, it promptly won a award.

The Kat turned out, arguably, better than the Yoshimura-1135R Pete posted up as the end goal for the build and it’s received praise far and wide.

A fitting tribute to a lost friend, I tip my hat to you Pete; the Katana is this month’s BOTM.

Oh no, here he goes again, twittering on about “evolution , not revolution” and “genetic engineering of an extinct species”

Well, nearly but not quite. I’m going to mix it up a bit this time and tell you a tale of evolution AND revolution.

Back in the Dino days of the old site there were many lovely bikes built but because they were scattered around the world you didn’t always get to see them in the flesh. I travelled a lot for OSS and I was lucky enough to see quite a few, close up. Some lived up to the hype and some didn’t. (I include my own creations in the latter category)

As luck would have it though, I didn’t have to travel far to see a bike, where the opposite was true. The pictures I had seen of this bike online, before I stumbled across it at a local bike meet, had not done it justice. That bike belonged to Gregg Campbell AKA Wee Man.

Looking around Gregg’s GSXR1100M Slingshot you could just tell his had been a long and intense love affair. It had the look of a bike that had been tastefully, and carefully evolved to meet its owners exacting tastes and requirements. All of which, were very tidy and meticulously well executed. If our FBOB had been there, he would have been forced to say “bugger me that’s shiny”. It instantly got my “bike you’d most like to take home” vote.

“But KM you promised us a revolution as well as an evolution!”. Easy tiger, I’ll get to that bit.

Fast forward a few years and I’m loafing around at the Fast by Me workshops drinking coffee and listening to Dave telling me about how he took an angle grinder to his modem, while on the phone to his internet provider’s customer support line. Out of the corner of my eye a familiar bike caught my attention. It was none other than Gregg’s Slingshot. “I know that bike” I said. Now we all know what happens to anything that goes to uncle Dave’s. That’s right, it gets the boost.( unless it’s a faulty modem)

The boost is pretty much Dave’s solution for everything ( I think he’s onto something). Gregg’s Slingshot was in for one of Uncle Dave’s rock solid turbo kits. Even Dave paused his internet tirade for a moment to chip in how tidy the bike was.

I’m sure Gregg will agree with me that the arrival of “the boost” has been anything but evolutionary and every bit Revolutionary! (made it, see)

This tells you all you need to know about limitless possibilities offered by 80s and 90’s Suzukis. The best part of breaking up, is making up, especially when the making up bit includes a extra-large bucket full of lairy charged up horses.